How to Cash Flow a Vacation with Your Friends 4 EASY STEPS

Has this ever happened to you? I feel like so often I get in these situations where I'm texting back and forth with a group of friends We're all very gung-ho to get a trip planned and then several weeks goes by and everybody is somehow Mysteriously broke. I think there is a way to cash flow trips with your friends if that's important to you It's certainly important to me. I love going on trips with my best friends And I'm gonna tell you exactly how you can do that you and your homies getting on a trip doing it cash flow in it Debt free in it So the very first thing that I do and this is how I always have money for vacations is I set up a separate Savings account specifically for vacations. I even label it our Adventures you could label it trips. You could label it spit for a specific trip Japan Slico paradise, whatever you name it Be sure to name it because when you put a name to a savings account you're less likely to pull that money out for something else and You're going to be motivated by that name to continue to pay into that savings account The second thing that I do is I build in a monthly savings Amount towards my vacation fund regardless if I have a trip planned or not I continuously save on a monthly basis by going over my budget and then figuring out how much of my income I want to set aside for vacation purposes. Now. I do this through a budget spreadsheet You can go ahead and use the exact same spreadsheet that I've been using since 2011 I will link to the toolkit in the description Download it write down your income write down all of your expenses and then build in those savings Categories directly into your budget and then figure out how much you want to save super easy That way you always have the money on hand in case you do get a text message like that that pops up and you say Done. I've got it on lock in my savings account. I can go tomorrow Now the third way you can cash flow your trip with your friends is to basically Captain the cruise a lot of times people are like woohoo I want to go and then nobody ends up planning the damn thing. So a lot of times you might have to just take ownership and Start researching things on your own. So I do this in using five different factors primarily So the first one is selecting a location with proximity to where you and your friends are flying out of so if you have friends that live out of state or You all are in the same city. Think about where you guys can go realistically if it's Flying or if you're taking a road trip or maybe people are flying in from different cities and meeting in one location Is that one location going to be close enough for all of you to get to and then the second thing that I look at is Transportation. So are you using flights to get there? Are you renting a car? Are you taking your own car train? Whatever figure out what that transportation mode is and then you can get an estimate of how much it's going to be the third thing is accommodations now Transportation and accommodations are the two biggest expenses that you're going to have in any trip but if you're taking a trip with your friends, this can be drastically reduced if you all split a hotel room, for example, or maybe you opt for an Airbnb the Third fourth the fourth thing is to factor in an estimate of food and drink So you're going to be spending money on food. You're going to be spending money on drinks So you need to factor that into different locations, obviously places like New York City San Diego your beers are going to run seven eight dollars and up Cocktails are going to be twelve at fifteen dollars and up So keep that in mind when you go to these bigger cities, you're going to be spending more on that stuff one way that I hack this is I always bring my own breakfast or opt for Hotels that offer breakfast as part of my overall hotel cost and then I also do a really cheap lunch And then I can splurge on dinner the fifth thing that I factor into my vacation Trip estimate is fun. So fun includes any tickets to shows attractions miscellaneous items like souvenirs Typically these things are going to be on the smaller end unless of course you are taking a trip Specifically to go to a concert then you're going to have to factor that in as well So if you can estimate those five things Well four things pick the location and then estimate those other four things That's really going to help you and your friends come up with a budgeted amount for the trip one thing I also do to is I keep a travel journal for every time that I take a trip and Then at the end of the trip I take a report of how much I spent in each of those four categories So if I ever go and want to do the same trip again, then I can see oh last time I was in Austin, Texas. I spent $500 so Realistically, I know that trip if I'm gonna do the same things is going to be $500 and therefore I have to save $500 Next if you are a credit card user and a responsible one that pays it off every single month to a zero balance Then you absolutely need to take advantage of travel hacking using credit card points This is how Kyle and I paid for $900 worth of flights during our trip to Europe We used credit card points to our advantage and we didn't have to pay for that 900 bucks Now you can do this through a variety of different credit cards I'm going to link to my affiliate travel freely They are awesome and setting you up with the right card that gets you the most Amount of points so that you can then use those points and turn them into travel rewards now I personally use Chase Sapphire in the Southwest credit card Which is also a part of Chase every time I make a purchase using my Southwest card Those purchases gets turned into points which goes towards my rapid rewards account and then I can redeem those points for Flights what I love about Southwest is that if you purchase a flight Using points and you have to change or cancel that flight. There's no penalty There's no fees that amount simply gets refunded to your account so that you can use it for a future flight Now the last way that you can cash flow a trip with your friends is to create a visual tool That you and your friends all use together To motivate each other to save up for the trip So you can take one of my vacation charts that I have on my website I will link to that in the description below you all print that out and then every time that you make a savings Contribution to your vacation fund color in a line until you have the entire trip saved up for You could also do a Google spreadsheet and share the link and every time you make a contribution for the month You just update your total in that spreadsheet and then people can access it and see like wow Justine already has $200 saved for this trip I need to go ahead and contribute at least $200 and get ready for this trip as well and I find when you're the planner and At least one other person hops on board. It makes it so much easier for other people to say yes and Find something that's going to be feasible for everybody. You don't want to pick a $5,000 trip if people don't have $5,000 let's be realistic. I've done very cheap budget-friendly trips with my friends going to Puerto Rico Las Vegas, New Orleans, and we've all done it on a very budget-friendly amazing plan Where we could have the most fun and not bring the trip home with us in the form of debt So if you are planning a trip or want to plan a trip with your friends, where would you go? Tell me below I really would love to go back to Vegas though. One of my friends told me that she really wants to go to Italy That's a big big trip. So hmm. I think I need to start saving for it now Excuse me. That was my stomach